Welcome to John C's PhotoBlog where I show my favourite shots and write about how I got them - as I did previously on Flickr. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to get blog updates.

I was back in my old hometown of Cork for a few days over the New Year and despite the stormy weather of the past week or so, New Year's Day itself was not too bad. I've been doing moonshots around Dublin Bay for years so I was keen to have a go around Cork Harbour for the Wolf Moon which was also a Supermoon - although I always think the use of th...

Last November's Moon was good to me - a few days before I got the Hunter' Moon here, it illuminated Crookhaven here and then it silhouetted the Fastnet Rock for me. This rock is the most southerly Irish point - it's also called Ireland's teardrop because it was the last bit of the country many emigrants ever saw.
I'd like to wish all the reader's...

Updated 17 January 2018: I've added shots at the end of the Irish Examiner press cutting of the Hunters Moon shot along a shot of an A2 print of this image being printed by 360-DPI for a client.
I didn't add that many images to my moonshots project in 2017, with cloudy weather not helping on several occasions. Here are three that I did like. The f...

Continuing with my look back of the past year, here are some of my favourite storm shots. The first is from the Great South Wall in Poolbeg, Co. Dublin during an unnamed gale - lots more shots here. Next, a tree blown down during Storm Doris, being cleared between Shankill and Bray - more shots here. Doris was quickly followed by Ewan although it w...

Continuing with my look back over the last year, here are my favourite composites (#2-5) from the 2016 Christmas Swim at the Forty Foot in Sandycove. To see all the shots and how for lots of information on how I shot and processed them, check out the original post here. Unlike the fine weather of last year, Christmas morning this year was wet and w...

I'm taking a break from my 2017 look back to show the best of my shots from yesterday at the annual memorial for the loss of the crew of the Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat on Christmas Eve 1895. They were attempting to rescue the crew of the SS Palme – a Finnish/Russian sailing ship travelling from Liverpool to South America to import hardwood. Check the D...

Continuing with my Best of 2017 series. I do a lot of fashion and social photography at racecourses but I like to think I could shoot the horses and jockeys as well! This one is from a Point-to-Point at Tinahely in Co. Wicklow last February - taken on an Offshoot outing.

Today's image from my best of the year series is a failed moon shot from west Kerry, where we took the family holiday in August. The Photographers Ephemeris told me that, from the western extremity of the Dingle Peninsula and Europe, the moon would set over the Blaskets at 5.48am on Bank Holiday Monday, the 7 August. So, no lie in for me! Sadly whe...

Starting with my update on the 2016 Winter Solstice yesterday, I'll be posting most days until early in 2018 with some of my favourite shots from the past year or so. Today's offering is Crookhaven by Moonlight. Its a panoramic stitch of three images I took on 1 November under a near full moon from Brow Head. This is the most southerly point on the...

Last year I made two magical visits to Newgrange in brilliant sunshine for the winter solstice on 18 and 22 December. I blogged about my first visit here and I've just updated my post with some shots from the second visit. You can see a few of these shots here in this post as well. The additional pictures include a few from inside the chamber where...

Friday was a fab late autumn day in Shankill but I was running around doing bits and pieces with no time for shooting... forgetting the fine camera in my iPhone SE! So, I took a few minutes to capture some shots along the Main Street of my adopted village. As I’m writing articles about smartphoneography, I should really practice what I preach!! And...

I’m taking a weekend birding and shooting around Crookhaven and Mizen Head in Co. Cork and I was lucky enough to get a good shot of a Red-Throated Pipit Anthus cervinus (left) in the marsh at Lissigriffin Lake this morning. This relative of the common Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis (right) breeds in Arctic Russia and migrates to the Africa and the M...

UPDATE 6 November 2017:- I've now completed the third article - this deals with editing your shots on your phone and provides a few more shooting tips. Check out the published versions of all articles to date here along with higher resolution versions of the shots and additional material that was not included in the print version for space reasons.

Since 2014 I’ve been shooting thousands of images at the Hell and Back endurance events at the Killruddery Estate in Co. Wicklow. Today I submitted 15 of the best for my Associateship or “A” Distinction from the Irish Photographic Federation (IPF). I’d previously failed with a different panel so it was a nerve racking morning as several panels befo...

Last Monday evening, I headed into town in the hope of getting a shot of Ireland's very partial view of the Great American Eclipse - check out some stunning shots of that here. I don't have any proper solar filters for sun photography so I hoped the clouds would do the job for me - as they did for my shot of the much larger partial eclipse we had b...